I think I might, have a theory about that frame rate droppage. The problem is I have no way of testing for it (100fps solid for me.)
I suspect it could be a sound in that room, just some of the ambient background noise. I never thought about it before but I got to looking at the exact file I'm using and it happens to be the largest one that comes with NS. (900kb) But while it's a nice sound, it's really bigger than it needs to be... there are shorter ones that sound similar that I'd like to try to use. (for reference sound/ambience/scaryambience.mp3 is the old one, and sound/ambience/b1.mp3 is what I'll use.)

Edit: Amnizu just tried swapping the files, and says it made a good difference for him (30-40fps to 90ish)! I'm hoping this is fixed! (A small drop in fps should be expected as it's likely you'll be going from small efficient areas to large open space, but not a large one like that.) If someone else would like to confirm this for me (by swapping the file names temporarily) that'd be great!

After a game the other day with CAPS, Nikon and Niteowl, I added a bit more cover to the hive and spread out the spawn points a little bit. It's not a whole lot, but I hope that not being able to shoot through this railing (along with more spawn points on the other side of it) should help. (Small games usually are doomed when any spawn camping starts though...) I've also moved spawn points closer to the ground, and some of the ones in the open I moved closer to structures to provide a quick place to run to.

These shot shows of some of the brighter lighting.
(Before weldable activated)
(After weldable activated)
The idea is to keep the switch useful, but not critical. (Previous versions of the map I played on a CRT that I had the brightness turned up, but this LCD goes to crap colourwise if I turn the brightness up on it. )

As you may have noticed, I've created additional custom screen textures (more crap to read while killing lorks and fades! Yay!) but that's not all, I've updated most of the old screens to make them look better, created more infestation textures (as seen in first shot) and a few other things as well.

It's not a whole lot different from the current version, mostly just tweaks to make it better on the whole. Aesthetically, I'm growing quite happy with my progress. I'd still like to play it with a whole bunch of people at once to get a better feel for how it's playing out. (And just for folks to know, YES, you can go to the roof in the atrium for excellent lork gas spam, much like in faceoff. This was a feature since version one! I say this because I never seen anyone up there and Owl told me I need a perch for him to look for his tasty meeces!)

I'm still not sure if I want to release this new version just quite yet though.

God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time. Terry Pratchett

Soooo... I've pretty much been sitting on a final version for the last two weeks now. I'm pretty happy with it, at the moment. The last compile was three days ago to fix a measly stuck spot that popped up out of nowhere. (Overall should better than previous version though.)

So yeah, this is me just saying I'm gonna release it in the next while here. Gonna do a small release first, mostly to test and make sure the stuttering issue is gone and no more bugs have popped up. So, if anyone wants to preview it, just say so and I'll pm a link whenever I manage to upload it.

The ONLY thing I may do first is try to bring down the file size. I never did optimize the music, so those files are still huge. The map size itself is up over 9 freakin' megs (uncompressed) so I might look into doing something about that if I can. I suspect I've accidentally included the ns/ns2.wad files into the map along with my own textures that I want there. Fixing that will require another 5 hour compile unfortunately.

I dunno. I figured out that map is so huge because of my use of bright dynamic lights. The only official map that is larger now is Hera, and you'll note I modelled my light usage after it.

I dunno about the music though. I'm not sure significant size improvements could be had without significant quality loss. All zipped up, what I have right now is just over 8 megs, barely a meg larger overall than the last version. Close enough.

With variable compression you can make a big difference without losing too much quality. However, for map download speed, compression is more important than quality, IMHO. I think you can go down to 32k and still have it be useful for readyroom purposes.

It's your baby though. You ARE an artist and have the right to create according to your vision.

Speaking of which, I played Moira last night and this latest version is awesome. A real beauty of a map. The modifications you made to the vent system are great. Love it.

I was thinking 128k would be my lower limit. Even though there is no voice work, well, in terms of artistic vision, I don't want to go about butchering POKEY's hard work (though that file is in most need of dieting)! The sekret room music though, I could go lower since that was my slapped together rip off a cd. (Yes, the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy movie sound track is on my playlist.) In fact, I might just re-rip that one myself tonight.

My only concern is based on my experience and what I've heard, compressing an existing mp3 to a lower bitrate rather than going from the original to that lower bitrate results in those screechy little artifacts, usually heard in ye olde mp3's of napster/audiogalaxy/kazaa yore where folks lowering bitrates of existing mp3s to save bandwidth was common.

Heck, if you'd like to try it, be my guest! Send it along and I'll see how it goes! If it still sounds good, I'll throw it in.

For the next version, as the time goes on, the whole level should become infested, like in the hive.

Tri-Optimum reminds you that there are only one-hundred-sixty-three shopping days until Christmas. Just 1 extra work cycle twice a week will give you the spending money you need to make this holiday a very special one.